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Paul is a seasoned freelance writer and leading industry voice. He has covered energy issues for a few decades, completed more than 10,000 articles, and had more than 1 million words published. He can be reached by email at paulkorzen@aol.com and Twitter

Renewables continue to make inroads in the US energy market, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Solar generating units will grow by 10% in 2019 and by 17% in 2020. Wind generation will increase by 12% and 14%. As a result, the two’s portion of the US energy market will rise from 10% in 2018 to 13% in 2020. What do you think about the changes: moving a good direction, average, or too slow? Why?

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Paul, though growth statistics (like capacity) are commonly cited to hype the usefulness of solar and wind for addressing climate change, on mid-page of its article EIA provides a sober reminder of how useless it is: "...solar is forecast to contribute slightly more than 2% of total utility-scale generation in 2020."

That 1/50 of America's electricity will soon by generated by solar panels is less significant than other conclusions to be drawn from the graph accompanying the article: 1) natural gas consumption is increasing nearly as fast as solar, and 2) gas consumption is up where coal is down, and down where coal is up - indicating we're essentially replacing one fossil fuel with another.

Per unit of energy generated gas is responsible for about half the carbon emissions of coal, so replacing coal with methane is an improvement. But according to IPCC, with few exceptions, we have to be done with fossil fuel by 2100. If new gas plants going online and new pipelines being built will remain in service for half a century or more, swapping coal for methane is not good enough - not even close.

True. Look at the bottom of the blue area on your second chart, showing coal and gas together. Horizontal, except for that massive 6% increase in solar and wind combined.

From then on out new Zero Carbon replaces NG.

Oh really? Not according to the EIA, which shows natural gas cruising northward with renewables, like two peas in a pod, through 2050 (apparently they don't believe the sun will shine at night after 2030, either).

Got it. EIA is "catching on" when their predictions fit your ideology; when they don't, their predictions are "a joke," they're "crap".

Confirmation bias, or the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories, has an evil stepbrother known as confirmation denial. It's triggered when interpreting new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs becomes logically impossible. Then, the source of the evidence is attacked in anger arising from issues of status insecurity.

Why does coal drop like a rock between 2005 and 2020 and then magically flatten out for the next 30 years?

It's possible a coal lobbyist has infiltrated EIA and is deliberately skewing the administration's interpretation of data to keep coal alive. More likely, you've fallen victim to linear projection fallacy, where a trend is erroneously expected to continue as it has in the past indefinitely. Sometimes, the expectation is a product of confirmation bias. When all else fails you fall back on the fallacy of opposition:

Coal will essentially be gone by the early 30s.

Essentially circular logic, the argument properly breaks down to "I am right, because I am right."

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